Quartered Safe Back Then

Bookworm of Bookworm Room has a first rate post in which she notes the decline in American appreciation of heroism from World War II to today. She quotes this passage from the superb memoir of the novelist George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered Safe Out Here, about his experiences fighting as a British soldier in Burma during World War II, to describe the change that has come over the West in the past seventy years:

An outsider might have thought, mistakenly, that the section was unmoved by the deaths of Gale and Little. There was no outward show of sorrow, no reminiscences or eulogies, no Hollywood heart-searchings or phony philosophy. Forster asked “W’ee’s on foorst stag?”; Grandarse said “Not me, any roads; Ah’s aboot knackered”, and rolled up in his blanket; Nick cleaned Tich’s rifle; I washed and dried his pialla; the new section commander – that young corporal who earlier in the day had earned the Military Medal — told off the stag roster; we went to sleep. And that was that. It was not callousness or indifference or lack of feeling for two comrades who had been alive that morning and were now names for the war memorial; it was just that there was nothing to be said.

It was part of war; men died, more would die, that was past, and what mattered now was the business in hand; those who lived would get on with it. Whatever sorrow was felt, there was no point in talking or brooding about it, much less in making, for form’s sake, a parade of it. Better and healthier to forget it, and look to tomorrow.

The celebrated British stiff upper lip, the resolve to conceal emotion which is not only embarrassing and useless, but harmful, is just plain common sense.

But that was half a century ago. Things are different now, when the media seem to feel they have a duty to dwell on emotion, the more harrowing the better, and to encourage its indulgence. The cameras close on stricken families at funerals, interviewers probe relentlessly to uncover grief, pain, fear, and shock, know no reticence or even decency in their eagerness to make the viewers’ flesh creep, and wallow in the sentimental cliché (victims are always “innocent”, relatives must be “loved ones”). And the obscene intrusion is justified as “caring” and “compassionate” when it is the exact opposite.

The pity is that the public shapes its behaviour to the media’s demands. The bereaved feel obliged to weep and lament for the cameras (and feel a flattering importance at their attention). Even young soldiers, on the eye of action in the Gulf, confessed, under a nauseating inquisition designed to uncover their fears, to being frightened — of course they were frightened, just as we were, but no interviewer in our time was so shameless, cruel, or unpatriotic as to badger us into admitting our human weakness for public consumption, and thereby undermining public morale, and our own. In such a climate, it is not to be wondered at that a general should agonise publicly about the fears and soul-searchings of command — Slim and Montgomery and MacArthur had them, too, but they would rather have been shot than admit it. They knew the value of the stiff upper lip.

The damage that fashionable attitudes, reflected (and created) by television, have done to the public spirit, is incalculable. It has been weakened to the point where it is taken for granted that anyone who has suffered loss and hardship must be in need of “counselling”; that soldiers will suffer from “post-battle traumatic stress” and need psychiatric help. One wonders how Londoners survived the Blitz without the interference of unqualified, jargonmumbling “counsellors”, or how an overwhelming number of 1940s servicemen returned successfully to civilian life without benefit of brain-washing. Certainly, a small minority needed help; war can leave terrible mental scars — but the numbers will increase, and the scars enlarge, in proportion to society’s insistence on raising spectres which would be better left alone. Tell people they should feel something, and they’ll not only feel it, they’ll regard themselves as entitled and obliged to feel it.

Go here to read the rest. The modern world: too little courage and too much emoting; too little selflessness and too much selfishness; too little reality and too much wishful thinking. We have lost treasures that we didn’t know we had when we had them.

Donald R. McClarey

Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three and happily married for 35 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.

I am very concerned about the time when those, who have just entered our military as 18 year olds, will actually be running it. Those with whom I have spoken do not seen to even understand the purpose of the military as I see it. In mind, the purpose of the military is to damage things & kill people when necessary (at the risk of our soldiers, sailors, & airmens’ limbs/lives) in order to provide protection for our citizens in our homeland. I know–that is a very old fashioned, niave view of our military–but that is the aspect of the military that to me makes such service honorable and the source of pride & glory for serving. (Again, I know that seeing such a concept of pride, glory, & honor in our military is very much out of fashion these days.) I spoke with a young, active duty member of our army recently about 5 years ago re: the battles takeplace in the Middle East. He said that he had only enlisted in the army because he needed the money–which I am sure is reality for quite a few of our military’s members. He also stayed that he disagreed with our country’s being involved in the Middle East at all. I told him that I felt like our taking the fight to the terrorists had at least delayed such things as radical Islamic suicide bombers blowing up our grandmas at Walmart–from happening here in the US. I told him that if we had not taken the fight to them that they would have increasingly brought it to us here on Main Street in the US. I don’t know now in hind sight that my thinking in these matters was correct at the time–however that was my honest view then. I was horrified to listen to the young army man say, “Why is it better to have your brother blown up in Iraq than to have your grandma blown up at the local Walmart?” I honestly did not know what to answer. His question revealed a great deal if his concept of service/sacrifice/political & moral reasoning to me–and I was horrified. When his type if reasoning reaches the top echelons of the military brass–we will never win a conflict again. The military will have ceased to know and/or understand its own purpose.

“Why is it better to have your brother blown up in Iraq than to have your grandma blown up at the local Walmart?”
Not only does it show an incredible lack of understanding of the ultimate purpose of a national military, but it also demonstrates an incredible lack of understanding of the concept of sovereignty.
1) Brothers shoulder risks so that their grandmas won’t.
2) The local Walmart is in our country while terrorists hunted in Iraq are not.
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This is a purely utilitarian outlook. But hey, what’s wrong with utilitarianism? Why even care about grandma getting bombed if you are considering euthanizing her? Why even care about your brother in Iraq, if he never got born because he was aborted? This has me-me-me amorality all over it.